


Will You Leave Me Lying Here in Your Favourite Darkness?

by Deafen_the_Satellites



Category: The Turn of the Screw - Henry James, The Turning (2020)
Genre: 1994, All Vomit No Comfort, Author Took Creative Liberty With Some Details, Canon compliant-ish, Grooming, Homophobia, M/M, Misogyny, Nightmares, Physical Abuse, Podfic Welcome, Prequel, Rape/Non-con - Freeform, Sexual Abuse, The Turning is a 1994 AU of the Turn of the Screw, Toxic Masculinity, Trauma is Another Form of Haunting, Underage Sex, dub con, gothic horror
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-19
Updated: 2020-10-19
Packaged: 2021-03-09 03:47:38
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 15,720
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27098329
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Deafen_the_Satellites/pseuds/Deafen_the_Satellites
Summary: Breathe.Ignore the twist of apprehension inside.
Relationships: Miles Fairchild/Peter Quint, Miles/Quint
Comments: 20
Kudos: 28





	Will You Leave Me Lying Here in Your Favourite Darkness?

**Author's Note:**

> Title from Depeche Mode's _In Your Room ___
> 
> Podfic welcome! Please ask me first in the comments. 
> 
> To my beta and creative partner, [Femme_Daltia](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Femme_Daltia). Forget the Ghostbusters, if ever I find myself trapped in a Gothic horror story, I'm calling her. Plucky governesses save each other. Together we'll be genre savvy enough to prove that Final Girl can be plural.

The part Miles remembers most clearly about that awful day is the weave of Quint’s sweater as he buried his face into it and sobbed.

It’s Quint’s favorite sweater, the one he wears everywhere, mucking out stalls, mending fences, oiling squeaky door hinges and performing other sundry tasks around the ancient estate. It’s wool, the color of russet autumn leaves and it’s the garment Miles most strongly associates with Quint.

It’s shortly after Christmas, a clear grey day, the kind where the sky is almost white, in stark winter contrast with the dark, bare trees. Miles has just finished a riding lesson with Quint and Morpheus, his glossy black horse, as he has on every school holiday since the age of seven. He’s in a good mood, hoping to savor the last few days of vacation before returning to school for the next semester. He and his dad are going to watch a movie together, something scary, later, after his five year old sister, Flora, goes to sleep.

He’s running up to the house when he spots a police car and an ambulance parked in the drive. He sprints ahead and finds Mrs. Grose, their housekeeper, in the midst of an animated interaction with the police.

“Where have they taken-yes, yes I’ll go there at once. No, I’m not family, well, not legally but-surely they’ll let me see her?”

“Mrs. Grose?” he calls to her. Something is very, very wrong and he feels the fear rising within him.

She glances up sharply and for a split second her unshakable composure is broken as panic flits past her eyes.

“Miles!” as if she didn’t expect to see him there. “Miles, your-there’s been an accident. Your sister’s been taken to the hospital but she’s alright, they’re almost certain she’s alright.”

“What kind of accident?” Flora can be a pain sometimes but she’s his baby sister, she has to be ok.

“Oh Miles,” she opens her arms and beckons him over. He cautiously approaches her. “Your parents and Flora were going into town and…they had just turned through the gate out onto the road when they were hit by another car. The front of the car was destroyed, Flora was in the back and it wasn’t bad there.” Mrs. Grose paused, swallowing, “Flora is so small she still fits in her car seat and thank god. It kept her safe.”

Miles feels a tightness in his chest.

“But you parents…” She touches his cheek, “Miles, I’m so sorry.”

“No.” He pulls away.

“Flora’s alright though. Do you want to come with me to the hospital to see her?”

“No.” He turns and bolts back to the stables.

He charges into the barn, shouting for Quint. He emerges from the tack room, alarmed.

“What’s wrong?”

Miles runs headlong into him and begins to sob. He can’t help it, he simply dissolves, as Quint wraps his arms around him, pulling him close.

Quint is gruff and masculine and normally Miles would be mortified to cry in front of him. But he can’t help it. His world has been tilted off its axis in the last fifteen minutes since he finished his riding lesson and he needs an adult to help him try to right it.

It can never be righted fully, never again.

He chokes out what Mrs. Grose told him and is just coherent enough that Quint seems to follow, hugging him tighter.

“They’re gone. They went for a drive and they’re never coming back!”

“No, god I’m so sorry Miles.” Quint pulls back to try to make eye contact with him.

“Don’t let go!” He doesn’t want to go back to the house, doesn’t want to see all the evidence of what’s happened.

“I’ve got you, Miles. Listen to me” –he pulls back again and Miles looks up at him—"I will never leave you. Do you understand? I’m right here and I’m not letting go.”

Miles nods and then presses his face back into Quint’s chest to cry some more.

* * *

Flora and Miles continue to live at the estate. Mrs. Grose stays as well, making sure they’re fed and cared for. Officially, their guardian is an uncle Miles scarcely remembers, having met him only once at a Christmas party when he was Flora’s age. As far as Miles is concerned, his uncle is in charge of their money, Mrs. Grose is there to make sure they survive to adulthood. Other than that, they are children in charge of themselves.

The funeral passes in a blur, Flora clutches his hand the entire time, refusing to let go. At the reception back at the house, when there is finally a moment where no one is solemnly clapping him on the shoulder or telling him how proud his parents would be of him, he whispers to Flora “tag, you’re it!” and runs out of the parlor and down the hall. He pauses to verify that Flora is following him before charging out the front door, heading for the garden labyrinth. 

“Wait for me!” Flora shrieks, happy, for the first time since the accident.

“You can’t catch me!” he calls back.

They chase each other, climb trees, and skip stones in the koi pond until dark, pretending just for a moment that everything is normal, that more than just wilting funeral bouquets await them back home. 

Flora cries at bedtime almost every night for weeks. Mrs. Grose appreciates it when Miles stays with her as she falls asleep, reading her story books, sometimes falling asleep beside her. He doesn’t like to admit it, but he likes staying with her; the nights seem longer and bleaker when he’s in his room by himself. 

Everything has changed and he doesn’t know what to do next. He can’t fathom things being this way for the rest of his life.

One night, after Flora’s asleep, he is overwhelmed by the sensation of being small and alone in a vast and empty world. He’s fighting off tears and he doesn’t want to wake up Flora.

He carefully creeps out of her bed and sets off for Quint’s room, the last room before the shuttered East Wing begins. 

He sees light under the door and knocks.

“Come in,” calls a voice from inside.

He opens the door to find Quint reading in bed, his russet sweater over his pajamas.

“Your light was on so…” he begins, by way of explanation. 

“What’s wrong?” Quint asks, putting down a magazine.

“I thought I was the only person awake in the whole world.” He knows better but he’s only thirteen. If he’s going to be Flora’s big brother, he needs someone else to tell him he’s going to be alright.

“Come here.” He reaches out his arm and gestures to Miles.

Miles walks to Quint’s bed and climbs into it, drawing his knees up to his chin.

“I can’t sleep. I have bad dreams.”

“You’re hurting and that opens you up to all the dark bullshit your mind stores during the day.”

He rubs Miles’ back.

“They’re just dreams, they can’t hurt you. That’s what the real world is for”, Quint says, a wry twist to his smile as if trying to lighten the mood.

“Can I stay here for a little while?”

“Of course.”

He curls up on his side while Quint continues to read. Eventually, he’s lulled to sleep, the soft sound of turning pages like waves lapping against the shore.

He returns a few nights later, and then the night after that, and the night after that. He can almost pretend he’s a little kid who’s wandered into his parents’ room again. It’s not the same, Quint smells different and the bed is smaller than his parents’ was, but it’s soothing to sleep there beside a grown up, trusting that Quint will fend off the shadows that creep at the edge of his consciousness.

Once or twice, when Quint thinks he’s asleep, he feels his hand brush gently through his hair, followed by the careful embrace of large, warm arm. It’s a balm for the ache inside and he lets it soothe him as he sinks into a dreamless slumber.

* * *

With time, the dreams subside and he no longer shelters in Quint’s room. Even Flora begins to fall asleep on her own and a new normal emerges. 

He drifts through the next few months, each day blurring into the next. He doesn’t always feel like he’s in his own body. Like he evaporated from the solid, grounded part of himself when his parents died. He doesn’t want to talk about it, doesn’t want to go back to school. School would be loud and bright and jarring. School requires you to be present and focused and he’s not sure he knows how to do that anymore.

He doesn’t have to fight too hard to stay. Flora flatly refuses to leave the grounds. She dissolves into hysterics at the gates at the end of drive more than once. Miles can say he stays for her but he’s not sure that’s really true. He doesn’t want to leave either. 

“You two are thoroughbreds,” says Mrs. Grose, gathering a snuffling Flora into her lap in the driver’s seat of her car, after one of Flora’s outbursts at the gate, “You are both high strung and you feel things differently from other children.” 

Miles looks out the window and doesn’t respond. _Feeling things differently_ implies he feels anything at all.

Throughout that winter and cold, wet spring the estate looks the way he feels. It’s dark and shadowy, as if each day is treading carefully, overly respectful of their mourning. In order to save money for their care and educations, his uncle has cut off everyone from payroll who isn’t strictly necessary to its upkeep. 

Repair men are called only when there is a problem beyond Quint’s scope, which is rare. Quint is kept on, of course, to look after the horses, the grounds, and the physical stability of the house.

Most days the estate is quiet, the house empty, save one old woman, a little girl, and a teenager. The entire East Wing is closed off, hasn’t been used in years and now it’s partially sealed, keeping out heat, dust, and prying eyes.

Miles explores it sometimes. Pushes the chained glass fronted door in the third floor hallway open just far enough that he can crawl through the gap. It’s always stuffy and close, cold in the winter, hot in the summer. It’s mostly empty, sparse furnishings obscured with dust sheets, looming like deathly creatures, mourning in silence. The only sounds are the creak of the floorboards beneath his feet and the occasional flutter of pigeons at the end of corridors and in the clerestory windows high at the top of the stairwell. 

He likes it here. It’s empty and doesn’t demand anything from him. It lets him be a ghost in his own house.

As warmer weather arrives, he’s encouraged out of the house more regularly by Mrs. Grose. “You need air,” she insists, “It’s too nice out to mope around the house all day.” 

He wanders down to the stables and finds Quint picking Morpheus’ hooves. 

“Haven’t seen you down here much lately.”

“No, I’ve been…busy…” Miles kicks himself inwardly for how pathetic an answer that is. Quint knows perfectly well he hasn’t been busy. Quint lives in the same house.

Quint isn’t of the house though. Miles can’t think of him like that. Quint belongs outside, in the stables, in the world beyond the estate. The house, or at least the part of it their small family resides in, is well kempt, orderly, and old. Quint stands out in that part of the house. His boots are always muddy, he’s never fully clean shaven (“if I didn’t want stubble, I’d have to shave twice a day” he rationalizes), and he’s blunt, frank. His presence in the main living area, the formal rooms, is crass, no matter how he might try. Hence why he’s almost always outside, eating his meals in the kitchen, retiring to his room at the end of the hall, leaving very little impression on the house unless you knew where to look. 

“mmhmm…busy exploring the East Wing?” Quint’s eyes flick up and look straight into him. Miles starts. The jolt of being seen sends a physical shock through him, reminding him of his body in a way he hasn’t felt in months.

“I…you know about that?”

Quint cocks an eyebrow. “It’s a place of shadows and echoes. Right up your alley these days.” 

Miles doesn’t have a good answer so he kicks at a rock deposited from Morpheus’ hoof into the straw covering the floor of the stall. 

Quint lowers Morpheus’ hoof to the ground. He straightens and places the hoof pick into his pocket. 

“Thirteen is a little young to give up and fade away.”

Miles shrugs, “I’ll be fourteen in the fall.”

“All the more reason to come back to the land of the living. There is a lot to experience at your age.” He gently clasps the side of Miles’ face. “What did I tell you the first time you fell off Morpheus?”

Miles rolls his eyes “Get back on the horse.”

“Right. Take the reins. I’ll meet you outside.”

He leads Morpheus out to the paddock and mounts. He hasn’t done this since his last lesson before his parents died. It’s a part of his life Before and he isn’t sure if it’s something he can still do. 

But he soon finds the familiar rhythm of hoofbeats shared between Morpheus and himself soothing and he begins to smell the dirt and manure and living essence of spring. He forgets to be empty and he’s at home in his body again.

At the end of the afternoon, after he’s untacked and groomed Morpheus he finds Quint leaning on the door to the stall. 

“Better?”

“Yeah, thanks”

Quint pulls him into a one-armed hug. “I wouldn’t let you go that easily.”

* * *

As spring stirs the estate back to life, the world brightens again. He rides Morpheus every day, runs through the labyrinth with Flora, racing her to the koi pond. 

It’s not the same. It never will be. But all in all, as Mrs. Grose reminds him, his lot in life is hardly miserable.

“The whole world is yours, boy,” comments Quint as they cut back thorns from the rose bushes by the parlor window together. Not as meticulous as a full-time gardener might but just enough that they don’t get out of hand. “You’ve got precious little to complain about.”

He shadows Quint everywhere, helping with tasks. He’d never appreciated just how much work it takes to maintain the house and the grounds and learning more about his own home is fascinating. It isn’t as perfect as it used to be because even with Miles’ help, Quint is one man and the job is far too big for him. The whole place takes on a wild, overgrown, raffish attitude. Miles thinks it’s an improvement, less fussy, more spontaneous.

There is no talk of schoolwork, not just yet, and thus Miles has all day to do what he likes. 

He rides every day. His form is improving but he needs to be more assertive.

“Rein him in harder, Miles,” calls Quint from the center of the ring. “It’s a strong animal. If you don’t exert power over it, you’ll never gain control.”

Miles is working on being more assertive with Morpheus. It’s hard to be assertive over something larger than you are. 

“Sit more centered in the saddle, straighter, head up.”

He rounds the curve of the ring and sees Quint ahead of him.

“You look good up there,” Quint smiles. That’s the closest he ever gets to praise and to Miles it always feels like a win to eke praise from Quint.

He has an idea. After dinner, he slips out to the toolshed and finds a pair of bolt cutters and sneaks them back to his room. Later, once he is certain Mrs. Grose has tucked herself in for the night, he creeps upstairs to Quint’s room. 

He softly opens the door to Quint’s room.

“I thought you were sleeping better now?”

“I am, um…your light was on. Shh, I want to show you something.”

He leads Quint to the doors to the East Wing, pushing them open as far as the chain will let him. He glances back up to Quint, who raises an eyebrow.

“Skinny little thing like you can fit through there. I can’t.”

“That’s why I brought these.” He holds up the bolt cutters. 

“You’re learning.” Quint nods in appreciation.

Miles crawls through the gap and then, with Quint holding the chain on the other side, cuts a link as quietly as he can. The chain comes free and Quint catches it before it hits the ground.

“We’re in!” Miles suppresses a giggle. Quint opens the door and enters, carefully threading the chain back through the doorknob hole, to make it appear intact. 

Miles had left an old battery operated camping lantern just inside the door when he was last here. He turns it on now and leads them through the hallways, in and out of rooms, upstairs. It’s all so mysterious in the dark, another world full of secrets to discover.

Eventually they come to a room in the eastern most corner of the top floor. A chest of drawers, covered in a dust sheet, stands in one corner beside an old mattress. There is an alcove opposite the door, a dirty stained glass window several feet off the floor. 

“I don’t think anyone’s been here in years,” he surmises. “Flora’s scared of the East Wing. Mrs. Grose has enough to do with the part of the house we live in that she’s got no reason to come. So it’s mine.”

“It’s nice.” Quint takes the lantern and looks around. “Quiet.”

“I mean it can be ours. Like our…” he struggles to find a word less childish than “fort” or “clubhouse”.

“Headquarters.” Quint finishes.

“Yeah!”

“Sounds like a plan.”

They drag the mattress over to the alcove for a place to sit and Quint begins to tell him stories. He loves Quint’s stories – places he’s been, injuries he’s had, observations of people and the world at large. Quint doesn’t talk down to him or withhold information the way Mrs. Grose does. Doesn’t ignore him the way his uncle does. 

Miles hangs onto every word, as if he needs to remember all this, absorb Quint’s life experience the way he would facts for school. Only it’s all so much more interesting than school and Quint doesn’t dilute things. He swears and talks about stuff that adults usually censor around him.

Eventually, they creep back to their rooms in the wee hours of the morning, leaving the lantern behind for next time.

“Bring more batteries,” advises Quint. “Keep a stock of them up here.”

They spend many nights there that summer, in their secret headquarters, away from everyone else. They talk, play cards, listen to tapes. Miles introduces Quint to his favorite music and Quint brings him cassettes to check out. Miles took guitar lessons back at school, before everything changed. He still thinks about taking it up again but he hasn’t quite gotten around to it.

Along with the cassette player and headphones, Miles keeps a deck of cards and an ashtray up there. Quint smokes, which makes Miles’ eyes sting a little in the shut-in room, but the haze in the light of the lantern is atmospheric, filtering between the pool of light and the shadows at the periphery.

One night, Quint lights a cigarette and casually hands it to Miles, without missing a beat in the story he’s telling. Miles has a brief surge of panic and exhilaration – Quint is letting him smoke! Shit, how does he do this?! – He tries to mask it as he takes a drag and promptly starts coughing.

Quint laughs and thumps him on the back. “Smaller and slower next time.” 

Miles takes to telling Flora ghost stories about the East Wing, to ensure that she doesn’t find their headquarters. She truly believes him and is scared to even walk in the hallway near the chained door, lest an apparition waft out and steal her away into the darkness.

He feels a little bad about that, for making her scared of her own house. He’s her big brother, why would he lie to her? She trusts him and he feels a twist of guilt knowing that he exploited that trust.

But he gladly spends his days outside in the sun and his nights in the dark of the East Wing. He lost enough in the winter that he’s eager to spend his summer tasting new adventures and doesn’t want to dwell on the negative.

* * *

In retrospect, he should have seen it coming. He’s the one who first came to Quint’s bed, after all, not the other way around. 

He was the one who brought him to the East Wing, made a secret hideaway for them both. 

It starts small, Quint’s hand lingering too long on his thigh when Miles is mounted on Morpheus, rough housing that gets a little too physical. One hot night in late summer, Miles stretches out on the mattress, the light from the lantern stinging his eyes. He’d been sharing whatever was in Quint’s flask. It burned and he wasn’t entirely sure he liked it, but he liked that Quint thought of him as someone to share a drink with. 

Quint often has a flask with him. Sometimes he brings bottles of beer. “Good idea to learn your limits. You’re in your own house, can’t get up to too much trouble here.”

He feels sleepy and restless all at once. He wonders if this is what being buzzed feels like. He closes his eyes against the glare. It’s hot and sticky. Eyes closed, he reaches down and pulls off his t-shirt, wading it up and putting it under his head. 

Time passes and he drifts in and out of sleep. He feels Quint lie behind him, his arms slowly winding around his middle, embracing him, as they had over the winter months that Miles had found solace in his instructor’s bed. 

A hand, which has been resting on Miles’ stomach, begins to slide downward and then under the waistband of his pajama pants.

“Hmmm…” Miles stirs.

“Shh…just relax and let me,” Quint whispers in his ear, “It’ll help you sleep.”

Quint’s hand is sure but gentle. It…well, Miles isn’t quite sure how to describe it. He’s done this to himself before and the sensation is similar yet totally different. He can’t anticipate what Quint will do moment to moment and that is disconcerting but also exciting.

He lies on his side, the worn cushion of the mattress against his cheek, his back sweat stuck to Quint’s chest – Quint must’ve taken his shirt off too – looking out at the room: floorboards tilting out away from him, out in the dark beyond their small pool of light, baseboards splintering as the walls begin, rising up at angles with shreds of wall paper hanging down like moss from cypress trees. 

His world narrows and narrows, the watchful eye of the lantern blurring as it all centers in upon Quint’s hand and Miles’ release.

* * *

In the fall, Ms. Jessel arrives. She is to tutor both Miles and Flora, signaling the return of structure to their days.

She’s alright. But school work is boring and there is so much else he’d rather be learning.

School means he can’t spend his days riding or as many nights with Quint since he has to get some sleep or else Ms. Jessel will notice. She’s firm that he has to be down in the parlor at 7:45 for breakfast, 8:15 for lessons. 

Flora warms up to her almost immediately and ~~l~~ ooks to Miles less for attention and companionship. Miles appreciates the change because it means he gets to spend his unsupervised hours down at the stables or in other far off reaches of the estate with Quint. He still plays with Flora when she asks, collects crickets and lighting bugs with her in the twilight. He consents to play hide and seek in the house on days when it rains or flashlight tag on the grounds when the nights are warm and breezy. But his agreement is grudging and his attention elsewhere. He’d much rather be with Quint, learning useful things.

Quint’s domain has expanded, encompassing the stables, the grounds, and all but the formal rooms of the house. Quint’s the reason it’s all still standing. He checks the drains, the gutters, unblocks toilets. Flora flushes a mermaid doll in her toilet once just to see if she can swim. Mrs. Grose is ready to call a plumber but Quint insists he can handle it. Miles hands him tools and tries to stand out of the way of the inch of water on the floor. Remarkably, Quint is successful although Flora pitches a fit when Ms. Jessel insists on throwing the doll away. 

Quint teaches him all manner of lessons beyond the schoolroom. How to curse. How to shave. How to drink.

How to keep his jaw loose and his throat relaxed while on his knees in the tack room. 

He isn’t so sure what he feels about that last one. It’s not a big deal, shouldn’t be a big deal. Quint’s done so much for him that it’s only fair. On the scattered occasions Quint has performed this on him, on their mattress in the East Wing, it’s felt incredible, so it’s only right he returns the favor. 

But he has to tamp down a nagging sensation in the pit of his stomach as Quint threads his fingers through his hair, tugging as he coaches him—“Yes, that’s – that’s right. Little longer, you can do it”—that maybe this isn’t what he really wants.

He knows he shouldn’t ever let on to anyone that this is happening, both because he might be prevented from seeing Quint and shit, Quint is the only person keeping him sane, but also because Miles knows what others might say about him.

Knows how this sort of thing lingers and follows you.

So he shifts on the stone floor, trying to better re-distribute his weight across his knees, and focuses on breathing through his nose.

Breathe. Ignore the twist of apprehension inside. 

* * *

The nights are longer now and they branch out from cards, music, and stories to further topics.

Women. Their bodies.

On the night of Miles’ fourteenth birthday Quint brings magazines, the kind Miles knew the older boys at school had after a few of them had been caught circulating them around the dormitory.

The pictures are lurid but…right…there. Like, he’s almost embarrassed to be caught looking at them but that’s dumb. Those girls posed for those pictures, were paid well for it, according to Quint, so why shouldn’t he look? 

“Aw, you’re blushing!”

“No, I’m not!” Miles has to suppress a bashful smile as he playfully elbows Quint.

“Don’t be ashamed to look, they’d be out of a job if men like us didn’t look. They need us and we need them. They want you to watch them.”

The mix of mortified and aroused Miles recognizes within himself right now has rapidly become familiar. The heady thrill of getting older and understanding more and more about the world winds in a corkscrew alongside doubt and a persistent anxiety he can’t quite understand. 

Growing-up is complicated and nothing is ever simple. Underneath it all is the grief he’s still trying to push away with both hands, especially on days like today. He’s been going through the motions just to get to tonight, when he could barricade himself away and hide from memories of all his other birthdays. Anything that makes this birthday different from his previous ones in a positive way is welcome so he leans into his discomfort and doesn’t hesitate when Quint dares him to show him what he wants to do to the girls who look back at him so brazenly from the well-thumbed pages.

Miles kneels over the pages spread out over the floor, jerking himself off, resisting the reflex to stay quiet, to cover himself, to hide. 

He looks up and makes eye contact with Quint as he does this. He fights the urge to look away because Quint is glassy eyed with watching him so why shouldn’t he look back?

Quint likes watching him so he likes watching back. He stirs something in Quint as Quint stirs something in him.

They stay like that until Miles’ eyes are forced shut with a jolt. 

* * *

He needs to be a little more careful though. He’s game for anything, or so he thinks, as the weeks go by, but there is a learning curve. 

He stops cooperating with Ms. Jessel, much to her chagrin. He goes to lessons but only when he feels like it, not on her schedule written in her perfect cursive. He was just fine making his own schedule over the summer and this isn’t regular school anyway. He doesn’t have the disruptions of other students and as long as the work gets done there’s only so much room for complaint.

But when he disappears for an entire afternoon, joining Quint in town on errands, eating dinner out at a local establishment, she gets suspicious. They get back after dark and head to their headquarters a little early. A few hours, and several beverages later, they are less quiet than they should when sneaking back to bed.

They’ve closed the glass paned doors behind them and are partway down the hall when suddenly Ms. Jessel appears, seemingly out of nowhere.

“Miles! Do you know what time it is? Where have you been? I nearly called the police!”

“Why?” Miles retorts, hoping he isn’t swaying. He feels a little unsteady but in a good way. “We were just…out?”

He’d rather she think they’re only just returning now than tell her about their headquarters.

“Out? Mr. Quint, where did you take him? Is he drunk?”

Quint and Miles exchange a glance and both start laughing. Giggling.

“Shh…shh! I told you we were too loud.” He stumbles even though he’s trying to stand still.

“Miles!” she grabs his arm.

“Hey, let go!” he whines.

“Mr. Quint, I’m appalled that you think this is appropriate for a fourteen-year-old. I would appreciate it if you would inform me before leaving the grounds with Miles in the future and please use better discretion in what you allow him to do.”

“Don’t lecture me, sweetheart, I’m not your student,” drawls Quint. “I’ve been looking after him a lot longer than you have.” Quint’s voice is even but there’s a hint of warning in his tone.

“Miles, come. To bed.” Ms. Jessel tugs him down the hallway. “Now.”

Just to be on the safe side, he doesn’t venture to headquarters for the rest of the week, in case she’s watching.

The shadows are gathering as the winter deepens and the East Wing is a little more intimidating as he navigates through the corridors and up the stairs to their room. The wind howls plaintively through the empty floors, rattling anything loose at unexpected moments. It can feel like treading carefully through an unknown forest, uncertain of what might lurk in the shadows.

It’s always a relief to reach Quint and the lantern.

The night Ms. Jessel caught them is not the last time he makes the mistake of drinking a little too much, mixing things from the different bottles Quint brings. It’s all fine until he has to lurch down the hallway to an old bathroom to vomit, the pale moonlight coming in the window over the tub bathing the room in a ghostly pallor as he heaves in the silence.

He can’t shake the feeling that he’s being judged for fouling a space he is trespassing upon, one with the quiet sanctity of a tomb.

He wipes his mouth on the old shower curtain and lowers the lid of the toilet. Quint says the water is shut off in this part of the house so he can’t flush away the evidence of his novice imbibing. He hurries back to their room. 

The drinking has its benefits though. It helps him get out of his head, loosens the tension he’s experiencing more and more frequently of late. 

Christmas is the first time he sneaks alcohol during the day, in hurried gulps in the bathroom from the flask Quint lent him. The pressure of opening presents with Flora under the eye of well-meaning adults is more bearable when he isn’t completely sober.

Flora rattles on about the imagined lives of her dolls to him that afternoon and he has to work to stay awake, nodding and offering up non-committal responses like “Oh cool.” “Sure.” “Of course.” while wishing she would go bother Ms. Jessel instead of him. She is paid to listen to Flora, after all.

His uncle proffers up a phone call and cards with checks in them by way of yuletide merriment. On Boxing Day, Miles experiences his first miserable hangover. 

He spends most of the end of December hoping no one notices that he’s somewhere between drunk, hungover, or counting down the minutes until he can escape the strained good cheer of the holidays and find Quint. 

Once January is underway, Quint takes the flask back and advises him not to make a habit of day drinking. He stops furtively drinking alone. 

* * *

He and Quint are lying head to head on the mattress one night, as he floats in the warm bubble of alcohol. It’s cold in the room so they’re wearing sweaters and have coats draped over them. 

“I had a dream about you last night, Miles” muses Quint.

“Mmm?”

“It was as if I was in your body, looking out of your eyes. I knew who I was but I wasn’t in my own body, I was in yours. I woke up in you right here, right in this room. I don’t know where I – I mean my body - was but I – we- walked out of the room and through the house. Doors opened for us, we could go anywhere, do whatever we liked. Nobody could tell me what to do or look down their nose at me for not blending into the woodwork, for not disappearing because I didn’t fit their stupid fussy décor.”

“I don’t look down my nose at you.” Miles turns his head toward him, his forehead brushing Quint’s cheek. “I don’t fit in either.”

“I know you don’t but Grose does. Jessel definitely does. The way they’re training her, Flora will too.” Quint absently reaches up to run his fingers through Miles’ hair, tugging slightly for emphasis, “You fit in more than you think. This place is yours, once you’re old enough to claim it. Never forget that, it’s yours no matter what anyone says. All you need to do is assert yourself, exert control. In the dream, people looked at me differently because I had your youth and your privileges but you had my presence, my will.”

There is a want in Quint’s voice unlike Miles has ever heard from him before.

“It was the best dream I’ve ever had.”

There is a weighted pause before Miles sits up and slides back to look Quint in the face. It’s hard to read, mostly in shadow since Miles body is between him and the lantern.

He’s thought about this for a while. He knows what Quint’s saliva tastes like from its residue on the cigarettes they share. It’s always slightly cold by the time it reaches Miles’ lips. He’s wondered what it tastes like, fresh and warm, straight from the source.

He’s never kissed anyone before and he knows there are names for boys who kiss boys. When he thinks about it too hard in daylight, he is ashamed to even contemplate finding out what it’s like.

But he’s curious.

Besides, this is his house. No one can tell him what to do. What he should or shouldn’t want. 

There are advantages to being forgotten about, secluded away from the world.

Drinking has quieted the self-restraint, the doubt. He leans down and softly kisses Quint on the lips.

He pulls back slightly after, doesn’t breathe. Waits for something, anything – he isn’t sure what – to happen. After a moment, he leans back in and kisses Quint a little more confidently. Quint’s hands come up to cradle his face and Miles clumsily shifts his position as best he can, bracing his elbow alongside Quint’s head as he climbs on top of him. Quint’s mouth opens in response and the kiss is warm and wet. 

He loses his balance and lands heavily on Quint’s chest, which leads to Quint rolling them both over until Miles is flat on his back beneath him.

The room is cold but it’s warm underneath Quint and he grips the russet wool of his sweater to pull him nearer. 

* * *

He really shouldn’t be surprised when things start to get out of hand.

He thinks he might be getting the hang of his limits when it comes to booze until he wakes up under a dust sheet one morning, completely naked and alone, in the cold gloom of dawn on the mattress after a night he remembers little of. He’s never spent a full night here before.

He rises up to his elbows haltingly – his head throbs, his body aches, he’s nauseous and groggy – and glances around, blinking in the light from the window above him. All is still.

He catches sight of Quint’s sweater, forgotten, tangled at the bottom of the sheet. He sits up and gathers it in his lap. 

Safety and grief are knitted together in that garment, seeped into the grain of the fabric like the tears he’d shed the day his parents died. Adventure and understanding, a hole worn at the shoulder betraying the years and the maturity he doubts he’ll ever achieve.

Miles pulls it on over his head. It’s too big for him and it’s rough on his bare skin. But he draws up his knees, rests his chin atop them, and, wrapping his arms around himself, wears it as armor against the gnawing emptiness within him that he does not wish to explore. 

Eventually he rises, collects his clothes, and sneaks back to his room. He doesn’t leave for the rest of the day. 

Later, lying in his room, trying to not vomit, he hears a concerned voice ask, “Miles?”

He opens his eyes to see Flora sitting on his bed next to him. Stark winter mid-afternoon light streams in his window, blinding him.

“Ugghhh...what?”

“Are you sick?”

“No, I’m just…tired. Go away.”

“Play Monopoly with me?”

“Get out of my room, Flora!” he shoves her and she falls off his bed, landing with a bump on the floor.

“Shit, sorry.” He hadn’t meant to shove her that hard.

“You don’t have to be so mean!” she spits back at him, then grabs her doll and runs from his room, slamming the door behind her. The impact sends a jolt through his bones and into his pounding head. He’s already too miserable to feel guilty. 

The following morning, he wends his way to the stables, still wearing the sweater. He pauses at the paddock fence and watches Quint exercising Morpheus for a few minutes. He feels better down here, familiar smells and sounds, the rough wood of the fence a comfort beneath his hands. 

Quint catches sight of Miles. His expression softens, almost pitying.

“That’s a good color on you,” he ventures carefully. 

Miles nods.

“So,” Quint continues, as if actively avoiding talking about everything that happened – or, must have happened, Miles is vague on the details himself – the other night, “ready for your lesson?”

Miles shakes his head. “No. I don’t – I mean…I want…”

_To just be here?_

_To be near you?_

_But not that near?_

Shit, why is this so hard? He’s acting like a shy seven year old.

Quint watches him flounder. Being under his gaze somehow makes Miles stumble more. After an awkward pause, Quint’s attention flicks back to Morpheus.

“Alright, well, there’s tack to clean if you want to.”

Miles, nods, relieved and heads around to the barn door. He polishes brass, cleans harnesses. It calms him, gives him something to do with his hands. 

Quint enters a little while later, bringing in the chill of the outside, the smell of earth, with him. Miles glances at him and then back to his work.

“Are you alright?” Quint asks, low, concerned.

“Yeah. Fine.” Miles shrugs. He is fine, isn’t he? A little sore still but not too bad. Yesterday wasn’t fun but the hangover’s gone now so there’s nothing to be wrong.

He starts when Quint rests his hand on his shoulder.

“Easy, easy now, it’s just me,” He chuckles. “You’re skittish today.” He reaches up to cup Miles’ chin.

“Miles, look at me. Is this about the other night?” He runs his thumb along Miles’ cheek. “I didn’t mean to frighten you. You know that, right?”

Miles nods. This is the Quint he trusts, the man of the world he longs to be.

“Good. Next time, maybe drink a little less? I’m worried this is starting to be a problem for you.”

Miles nods again.

“Besides, you’re still too much of a lightweight to drink me under the table.”

Miles attempts a laugh. It comes out halfway between a snort and a hum.

Quint slowly pulls him into a hug and Miles leans into him, breathing a sigh of relief. This feels normal, like things aren’t going to stay weird between them.

“I will never leave you,” Quint promises again.

* * *

Winter turns to spring.

As the world re-awakens, he senses something coming. He doesn’t know what, and whatever it is keeps not happening. He’s not sure if he should be ready or not, and the uncertainty is nerve wracking.

He’s irritable all the time. He paces the halls, runs through the labyrinth, rides Morpheus. Every time he thinks he’s getting better at controlling him, Morpheus proves stubborn and resistant.

He’s trying to rein him in one day when Morpheus changes course suddenly. Miles loses his balance and lands in the mud. It’s been years since he’s done something so stupid and he’s just irrationally angry. He stomps back into the stable, unclasping his helmet and throws it, shouting in frustration.

He’s ineffectually kicking an empty bucket down the length of the stable when he senses Quint watching him.

“Get back on the horse, Miles,” Quint reminds him calmly.

“No.”

“Do as you’re told.” Quint sounds more resigned than angry.

Miles flops down onto the ground, sitting with his back to the doorframe of the tack room.

“Nothing ever changes. I hate everything and I don’t know why.”

Quint reaches over to ruffle his hair but Miles swats his hand away without looking up.

“Don’t touch me.”

Quint pauses, his hand midair. He sighs.

“You’re growing,” he surmises, “and it makes you hungry all the time. You just don’t know what for.” 

He turns and heads out to the paddock.

Miles figures he’s probably right. Quint has a way of making sense when no one else seems to. 

* * *

It’s a wet spring, filled with seemingly endless rainy days he spends wandering the house, bouncing a ball off the walls. He tries not to snap at Flora but, god, she’s so annoying sometimes. She’s almost seven but she still wants him to play little kid imaginary games with her dolls when he’d rather be in his room, picking away at his guitar for the first time in over a year.

Jessel is not amused with him.

“Miles! Miles! Put the ball down and come here! You’re distracting your sister and you have math homework!”

“I’ll do it later!” He snaps.

“There’s nothing more important for you to be doing now. Come here!”

“You’re not my mom!” he shouts back, “and your Flora’s governess, not mine.”

He almost wants to go to school again, just to have peers his own age instead of an old woman, a little girl and a teacher with a grating voice who may be young but isn’t even hot. But, he reasons, school would just be another prison full of assholes to be trapped inside with. 

He wants a change but doesn’t want to change anything. Hates himself a little but hates everyone else more.

* * *

“Look at these!” Quint tosses a stack of photos onto the floor out of a sleeve from the 24-hour photo place down the road. 

Miles picks them up one by one to hold them close to the light. Most are blurry, framed poorly. After a few photos it becomes clear why.

“Is that…?”

“Yep. Jessel’s tricky to catch but I got her. She fell asleep with the light on so I finally had enough to shoot by”

These are pictures of Jessel asleep in her room, oblivious to the camera. The angle is strange, Miles twists the picture to find how it should best be viewed. Quint took these quickly without mind to art or narrative. 

She looks dead in some of them, pale and overexposed like in a crime scene photo on a tv show. If you don’t know the context around her, it almost seems like her neck is broken.

These pictures are taken from very close by. 

“How did you get these?” Miles asks, unable to look away.

“She doesn’t lock her door, can you believe it? I know she wants to be ready if Flora needs a mommy in shining armor in the night but, really? If she’s dumb enough to not lock her door then she deserves whatever she gets.”

Miles has never locked his own door at night.

“You don’t lock your door.”

Quint is incredulous. “Why would I need to? I’m a man, who’s going to try to fuck me in my sleep, Grose? She dried up years ago if she ever did have anything in her panties.”

Quint spreads the pictures out on the floor, scanning over them.

“Jessel knows better. If she’s not careful around you and me, then she wants us to get in.”

Miles inhales from his cigarette contemplatively, while leaning forward, stretching out on his stomach, pulling a few more photos closer. 

_You and me._

The last few are different and it takes him a moment to realize what he’s looking at. They are framed by the keyhole of the bathroom door – Jessel has an en suite bathroom so Quint would have had to wait until he was sure she was going to be in the bathroom and then have entered her room to crouch by the door. 

He can make out the curve of her shoulder, her hair in wet strands. After a couple of pictures, her arms are raised and she’s partially turned toward the camera. She’s naked and in the bathtub. 

“Whoa!” He’s impressed with Quint’s temerity. It takes balls to pull this off. 

“I know, right. She’s got nice tits, I’ll grant her that.”

Miles rolls over onto his back and looks up toward the rafters, drawing on his cigarette. “So what do you think she expects us to do when she doesn’t lock her door?” 

Quint grins. “Use your imagination. What would you want to do if nothing kept you back?”

“I don’t know,” Miles laughs, a little embarrassed.

“Yes, you do,” Quint teases, resting a hand on Miles chest, taking the cigarette back with his other, placing it between his lips. “You’re not that innocent. It’s all inside you, waiting.” He shakes Miles slightly for emphasis, lightly running the tip of his tongue over the rough place on his lip where Miles had bitten him the night before.

It had been an accident and Quint had reared his head back with a sharp cry and for a split-second Miles had worried that he'd hurt him and that he might be angry. But Quint had reached a finger up to his lips to check for blood, chuckling to himself as it came away with a red smear. He’d caught Miles' eye and regarded him for a moment before lunging forward, pinning his wrists to either side of his head, grinning, as he’d kissed him harder, raw and ravenous, trailing down Miles collarbone, chest and abdomen. Miles' hips had bucked and he’d tasted copper in his mouth as Quint swallowed him down.

He'd noticed the mark on Quint's lip that afternoon as they’d checked the koi pond's pump and couldn't help but feel a little bit smug. Quint had noticed and whacked him playfully with his work gloves. "Don't get cocky."

Miles sits up with the memory, glances at the photos, and then back to Quint. He tosses his hair out of his face, the way he knows Quint likes, defiant with a hint of flirtatious, then rises to his knees. 

Holding Quint’s gaze, he slides down his pajama pants and gets himself out. He aims toward the photos on the floor and begins to pump his fist up and down. 

He catches sight of one he hasn’t seen before, probably the last one on the film roll, where Jessel’s face is seen in three-quarter-view, as if she’d suddenly heard something.

Or realized she was being watched.

In that moment it’s as if he’s being watched, like all those times he’s drunkenly lurched to the bathroom here in the East Wing. He immediately feels himself going soft in his hand.

Miles is still looking at the picture when he hears Quint say “Hang on” followed by the sound of tapping against the ashtray and then the slide of Quint’s zipper. He crowds in close to him and wraps his hand around both their dicks, eliciting a small, surprised gasp from Miles.

“Here.” Quint uses his free hand to guide Miles’ back to their dicks and he sets the rhythm for Miles to join him.

They pant together and Miles starts to rest his head on Quint’s shoulder. It won’t be long now, he never lasts long. Quint shakes him off.

“No, look at her. She wants this. She wants us.”

Miles looks, traces her body, vulnerable and unaware except for the single photo documenting her moment of doubt, her glimmer of frightened understanding in the midst of blissful ignorance.

He comes then and Quint soon follows, their sticky mess splattering together across the images on the floor.

* * *

As the summer heats up, so does the animosity between Jessel and Quint.

Jessel insists on staying for Flora’s riding lessons, as if she doesn’t trust Quint to be alone with her.

“She’s a little young for me, what do you think is going to happen,” Quint snorts in her direction.

“All the same, Mr. Quint, I’d rather supervise,” responds Jessel primly. She looks like she’s swallowing a pin. “Perhaps I’ll learn something about horsemanship while I watch.”

“I could teach you a few lessons.” He smirks in Miles direction and Miles snickers.

Jessel’s spine straightens even more. “I doubt that. I’m not your student, Mr. Quint, and I’m not a little girl.” 

“Your loss.” Quint shakes his head, crushing his cigarette under his boot.

“Miles,” Jessel instructs, “go back to the house and do the assignments I’ve marked for you.”

Miles, sitting atop the fence, looks down at her. He likes sitting up here, it’s the only way to be taller than Jessel. “No, I want to watch Flora too. I can help her since I’ve been riding longer.”

“You’ve been down here all morning and you have schoolwork. Go back to the house during your sister’s riding lesson.”

“It’s summer! Why do we have school in the summer?”

“If you had given more time to your studies in the fall, winter, and spring maybe you wouldn’t still be behind.”

“Let him do what he likes, you only get so many summers when you’re young.”

Jessel rounds on him, “Mr. Quint, do not tell me how to do my job. You are here as riding instructor and groundskeeper. I am here to see to it that the children are not ignorant, uneducated, and spoiled beyond salvage. Please do not persist in undermining me.”

Quint replays that exchange many times over the next few sessions in headquarters. Nights are now devoted to his increasingly specific tirades about women, Jessel and her ilk particularly, cataloging every slight he’s received from her.

“I’m going to tell that stuck up bitch what I think of her. I am. She’s got no right to look down at me, with her fancy degree and her feminist bullshit. I’m not a little girl and I’m not her student.”

“Me neither.” Miles stretches out on his side on the mattress, propped up on his elbow. If past experience is any indication, this rant isn’t going to end any time soon. He’s heard it a few too many times lately. 

“Got to admire her a little though. That chick’s probably a fierce little cunt in the sack.”

Miles nods in agreement and looks down at the flask he’s holding, taking another sip. He kinda wishes Quint would quit talking about Jessel all the time. She’s Quint’s favorite topic of late and, well, it’s getting a little old. They aren’t talking about music any more. Or horses. Or…anything else. Increasingly Miles finds himself zoning out during these rants, wondering how much longer it will be until he can go back to his room. 

Last summer, hanging out here at night was new and exciting, as were drinking and smoking. But the first blush has worn off and he’s not enthralled with the current topic of conversation.

He’s tired during the day. Mrs. Grose has commented on how much he’s been growing lately, glad it’s summer since shorts are more forgiving than long pants when it comes to lengthening legs. She’s been telling him he needs to sleep more at night, that he shouldn’t stay up so late. He still keeps his light on at night, to keep up the ruse that he reads until the wee hours of the morning. 

He finds himself wanting to make music again, to experiment with his guitar and drums. He has ideas, so many ideas he wants to share with Quint if only he would shut up about Jessel. 

Also…some of what Quint says about her, about what he wants to do to her, makes him feel a little sick. Maybe that’s just the blend of sleep deprivation, alcohol and nicotine but it doesn’t sit well with him. It’s as if past uncertainty is now bubbling with his recent aversion to Quint’s fantasies about Jessel, churning within him.

He wishes Quint would finish so he could get the hell out of here and go back to his room. This place is old and decaying and it gives him the creeps. He perceives a palpable tension in his shoulders and calves when he’s here now, dread stalking through the halls, the darkness creeping closer and closer to their circle of light. The lantern sees all but even it can’t fend off what might be lurking behind the endless rows of closed doors. 

He also knows that when Quint gets himself riled up enough with ranting, he later demands more of him physically. He’s quick, impatient and rough. He doesn’t appreciate back talk and lately it seems any speech from Miles constitutes back talk.

“Quint-“ Miles starts in the middle of their activities later that night, “Quint, you’re – ow, Quint you’re hurting me!”  
  
“Stop whining! Be a man!”

That shuts him up. He still wants to be someone Quint can respect. He just wishes Quint wasn’t treating him more like a child than he was last summer. Back then, he seemed to appreciate Miles’ opinions. Now he just lectures.

Miles keeps his mouth shut and complies, grudgingly, knowing that it would be unwise to cross Quint, especially in the middle of the night when Quint has had a few, but his patience is wearing thin as his anxiety ramps up. He’s having trouble sleeping again, the ever-present dread that something terrible is going to happen ratcheting up as soon as the sun sets.

* * *

He never says anything about Jessel, but he does struggle, only once. He can’t fully explain why since Quint isn’t asking for anything they haven’t done a dozen times already, but that night Quint is too close, his stubble too rough, his hands too hungry. The knot in Miles’ stomach tightens, and the tension in his limbs screams out without hesitation.

He tries to brush him aside but Quint catches his wrists. He tries to squirm out from his grasp but is manhandled down onto the mattress. He begins to thrash, but, although he’s grown recently, he’s all elbows and is no match for Quint’s full weight pressing down upon him. 

“Get off me, asshole!” he shouts, half expecting a hand to clamp down over his mouth lest Mrs. Grose or Jessel hear him.

Instead, Quint’s hands clasp his throat, cutting him off mid-shout, constricting until no sound can come out at all.

It’s all been building up to this, all the uncertainty he’s been grappling with, all the shadows creeping in the periphery of his consciousness now rushing into Quint, his face hovering just above Miles, red and vicious, furious and bestial. 

He’s never seen this Quint before but it’s so clearly at one with him that Miles can’t fathom how he didn’t see it.

He tries to fight but he can’t. He can’t breathe, can’t think. 

“He’s going to kill me”—Miles thinks through his blind panic—“He’s really going to kill me.”

Quint is emitting a low growl as he leans in closer toward Miles, their foreheads close to touching, his sweat dripping into Miles’ eyes.

He holds Miles’ gaze until he slips into darkness. 

* * *

When he comes to, gasping and coughing, his vision swimming, Quint is inside him. Nothing is steady.

Miles is jolted with each thrust, air rushing into his lungs, as he realizes he’s alive. 

The lantern light is searing, suddenly too bright as his eyes adjust to seeing again.

Quint finishes and drops down upon him, his breathing and heart rate slowing against Miles’ skin. Miles’ own heart still beats ferociously, and his breathing is nowhere near stabilized. Miles’ hands wander erratically, learning his surroundings - mattress, rumpled clothing strewn about, the grain of the wood floor. 

He is alive. He is in the East Wing. Quint is everywhere. Quint is still inside him.

Quint lifts his head and glances up at him, threading his hand through Miles’ curls.

“You shouldn’t defy me, Miles. I’ve broken more willful colts than you.” 

Miles breathes.

* * *

He takes to wearing his riding jacket everywhere he goes, the collar popped-up in an attempt to hide the bruises, purple black, across his throat. 

The bruises on his hips and thighs are easier to hide. 

Still Mrs. Grose notices.

“Miles!” she exclaims one afternoon when she passes him in the foyer, on his way to the stables, reaching her fingers up to lightly graze the angry marks on his skin, “What is this?”

“Leave me alone, you nosy old bitch!” he swats her hand away as he hastily retreats—“Why do you have to touch me all the time!?” He breaks into a run out the door and down to the stables. 

He knows better than to cross Quint now. He knows to come when he’s called and otherwise stay away. It’s all fine so long as he keeps Quint happy. So long as he does what he’s told.

Quint catches him by surprise one afternoon as he comes out of Morpheus’ stall. He barely registers his presence before he is suddenly slammed against the wall, a hand at his collar. He stammers apologies for whatever he’s done, praying that the hand won’t cinch down on his airways again. 

They stay like that for a moment as Quint regards him. The only sounds are of Miles’ panic as he trembles, desperately trying to read Quint’s mood. 

Quint releases his collar and slides his hand down Miles’ chest to his jeans. He slowly pops the button and unzips, reaching inside.

He is gentle and works his hand slowly, leaning in to press Miles to the wall, supporting him as his knees buckle.

Even as something resembling pleasure floods him, he can feel the familiar twist of uncertainty knot within him.

Quint murmurs calming half-truths and fragments into his neck and hair, holding him upright.

Miles cannot stop trembling.

* * *

It’s not long before he’s informed by Mrs. Grose that his uncle has arranged to send him back to school for the fall term. That’s only two weeks away. 

It’s time, his education has fallen by the wayside this past year and a half. He needs more regular instruction. Schoolmates. Structure. 

Miles suspects Mrs. Grose is behind this. Quint isn’t fired so she probably hasn’t told his uncle anything specific. But she must have her suspicions.

Miles makes a fuss, stomps to his room, slams the door, blasts music for hours. He doesn’t want to be told what to do, not when this is his damn house.

But there is a small part of him that is a little relieved. 

He’s going to miss Morpheus, riding across the grounds, doing whatever, whenever he likes.

He spends as much time as he can riding, away from the stable, away from everyone else. He knows from experience that school will be an end to privacy. 

The day before he’s set to leave, he finds Quint waiting at the stable door. He watches Miles as he rides up and heads inside while he dismounts. Miles feels a sudden tug at his heart. He’s kept his distance from Quint ever since he learned he was leaving. 

He returns Morpheus to his stall and begins to brush him down, all the while anticipating Quint’s approach. Nothing. He periodically checks over his shoulder, growing more anxious by the moment.

He’s leaving tomorrow. Quint has to have something to say. 

He’s a little afraid what that might be. 

Miles finishes and nuzzles Morpheus’ neck to say goodbye. After a final reassuring pat, he leaves the stall and goes looking for Quint.

He’s going to have to go to him. Just like he did when this all started. 

Quint is just outside the barn door, leaning on the doorjamb, smoking the end of a cigarette. He’s been waiting. 

Miles slowly approaches and waits for Quint to notice him. 

“Haven’t seen you down here much lately.”

“No, I’ve been…busy. Packing.”

“I know, I live in the same house.”

Quint isn’t meeting his eye. He seems hurt and Miles instantly feels like shit for avoiding him.

He wasn’t avoiding him on purpose. Was he?

He won’t see Quint until Christmas. He’s barely gone a day in the last year without seeing him. Not until two weeks ago. It scares him to know that’s all about to change.

“Meet me tonight,” He blurts out.

Quint takes a moment, drawing one last inhale from his cigarette before looking back at him. He’s skeptical but concedes “Alright.” 

“Alright,” Miles nods, “Yeah, I…have to go…finish –“

“Packing.”

“Yeah.” Miles takes a couple steps back, turns and heads back to the house.

* * *

That night things are as they used to be. They play cards, spend hours talking, share cigarettes, the smoke curling off into the shadows beyond their pool of light. It’s when Quint lights a cigarette, takes a few drags from it and passes it to Miles that he knows he’s forgiven. It calms his nerves to taste the wet of Quint’s saliva. They share several this way, enough that they could have each had their own. But the intimacy of sharing them was the point. He’s going to miss this. 

“Send me cigarettes at school and I can get back home sooner. I’ll smoke them and get caught so many times they’ll have to suspend me.” Miles reaches over to hand one back to Quint. They are sitting facing each other, each leaning against one side of the alcove, beside the mattress.

Quint laughs. “If you want to get suspended you shouldn’t limit yourself to cigarettes. That’s for eleven year olds not fifteen year olds.” 

“Won’t be fifteen until later in the fall.” 

“Old enough to get into plenty of trouble.”

Miles is sleepy and finally relaxed. His inhibitions are down. He’s willing to risk what comes next. He crawls forward, closing the space between them. Quint watches him but doesn’t move to meet him. Miles stops, his face only an inch away from Quint’s, and waits.

He wants this. Maybe nothing more, but he wants this.

It frightens him to think that Quint might seize the moment and push him down on the mattress, take him one last time. He doesn’t want that again.

But it frightens him a little to think that nothing will happen. That he’s wrecked everything by distancing himself lately.

He leans in to meet Quint’s lips. Quint turns his head away. “No.”

“Please?”

“No, Miles.”

He shifts back to sit on his haunches. “Why not?” he whispers, praying that he doesn’t sound needy. 

“I think we’re past that.”

Miles can’t help but feel rejected. “I didn’t ask to be sent back.”

“No, but it’s time.”

“Write to me?”

Quint finally leans forward, cups his face, and kisses Miles’ forehead.

“Of course.”

He leans back against the wall and Miles follows, curling up on the floor, his head resting on Quint’s chest. The evening is chilly for late summer and Quint is wearing the sweater. There is still safety in that sweater, innocence woven with experience.

* * *

In the morning, Miles finds the sweater hanging from the doorknob to his room.

He does not see Quint again.

* * *

School is, predictably, overwhelming. Suddenly there is no place to be alone, no quiet, no spontaneous adventures.

He has trouble focusing and getting his homework in on time because he hasn’t had deadlines in ages. He’s bored with the work and spaces out in class, looking like an idiot when he’s called on and has no idea what’s just been said.

He didn’t miss this.

Oh yeah, and his roommate is a dick.

It’s as if his life is on re-set, reverting back to what it was like before that winter break when everything changed. If he were to fully embrace school and its rhythms and rituals, he could pretend this last year and a half never happened and that the only reason he hasn’t seen his parents recently is because they are back at home while he is here, languishing in adolescent perdition.

Last time he was here home was a different place. Home has since been a whole other epoch in his life and now school beckons with a promise of normalcy.

But he isn’t sure he wants that normalcy.

When unpacking he re-discovers an old scrapbook of family photos, letters and cards amongst his school supplies. His mother made it for him before the last time he went away. He hasn’t looked at it since they died. Shame creeps its way into him. Ever since that awful winter, he’s done nothing but push away all thoughts of them.

He scarcely recognizes himself anymore. He feels like a totally different person than who he was that Christmas nearly two years ago.

He falls asleep most nights leafing through his scrapbook rather than doing his homework. 

When his roommate, Jedd, is out of the room, he lies on the floor in Quint’s sweater, playing cassette tapes over and over again. Some are ones he discovered on his own, others are mixes Quint made for him. He longs for a cigarette.

Quint writes to him, as promised. Notes about Morpheus and the grounds. Quint’s commentary on life. Jessel observations. Miles is glad he doesn’t share any new photos, he wants distance from that particular obsession of Quint’s.

Although maybe photos of a naked chick would shut Jedd up for once.

“Another letter? Who from, your boyfriend Peter Quint?” taunts Jedd, snatching a letter away from Miles at mail call, before he can even open it.

“Fuck you, Jedd,” mutters Miles as he wrenches it back. 

“No way, man, I don’t want your AIDS.”

He’s hidden his letters away well enough that Jedd hasn’t read any of them. Yet. But his roommate’s noticed that with the exception of a few cards in what is clearly Flora’s handwriting all of Miles’ mail comes from Quint.

Just yesterday Miles had to scrub the word FAGGOT in White-Out off his backpack. He can still see traces of it. 

His birthday card from Flora is accompanied by a letter and some crayon drawings. They’re pretty good, her drawing has gotten a lot better. When did that happen? It bothers him that he doesn’t remember what her drawings looked like in the months before he left for school. Had he really not noticed?

Her penmanship and letter writing skills have improved too. Looks like she’s actually learned something during her time with Jessel. That was more than he could say. She’s seven now and while she’ll always be his baby sister she’s definitely not a baby anymore.

He makes a mental note to spend time with her at Christmas and not simply endure it all in a chemical haze. Last Christmas couldn’t have been any easier for her than it had been for him. Hell, it was probably worse since she’d actually been in the damn car during the accident. He hadn’t really thought about that at the time, so wrapped up as he was in his own grief.

He’s also got a letter from Quint. He hurries to the library after dinner to read it, where he can be away from Jedd and everyone else. 

The birthday greetings are dispensed with in a sentence or two. The letter is different than his others, it’s longer than usual and quickly descends into poetic ramblings, similar to the musings he drifted through when drunk and sleepy.

_“…I dreamt I was inside you again, could see through your eyes. I prowled out of the East Wing, through the house. I felt invincible, young and alive because I was inside your body. We could go anywhere we wanted, do whatever we liked because we were tangled together._

_I guided your hands and you liked it. You grew and I could feel your energy make me stronger. You asserted yourself…”_

The letter continues but it becomes less coherent. It descends into the rants Quint used to have late at night and Miles again feels himself mentally backing away. He used to look up to him so much, clung to every piece of knowledge he could glean. But he questions that devotion now. Quint isn’t always so solid, so sure anymore.

He slips the letter into his bag and heads back to his room. 

* * *

That night he dreams he is back home, images flashing before him in jagged shreds of sight and sense. 

_He’s running through the halls, his tread heavier, his body feels different, his mass moves with surety but not like he’s used to._

_There’s someone up ahead of him, a woman, running from him. She shouldn’t run from him. He grabs her by her hair and drags her into the wall, thumping her head back as he forces a kiss upon her._

_Jessel. She’s terrified, squirming and clawing. She stomps hard on his instep, shoves his face away sharply with the heel of her hand._

_He jumps back. Or, his body does, he’s doesn’t seem to be controlling his body. Or, this body. He’s not totally sure it’s his, it’s more like he’s riding along with it._

_Jessel breaks free and runs. He follows._

_They’re out by the koi pond, moonlight filtering through the trees in silvery bars. Jessel trips and falls, skidding along the gravel._

_Before she can get up he’s wrenching her over onto her back, rending her clothes as he shoves her down._

Miles stirs in his bed.

_She’s pleading, sobbing and this makes him want to make her suffer, teach her a lesson._

-He’s flat on his back, one leg gripped behind the knee, Quint pulling him against him with each thrust, his other hand holding him down at the hip-

_He forces himself inside her and it’s warm like revenge. He’s won and she’s sorry._

-It hurts and the pain is a threat, a promise that it will get worse before this is over-

_He wraps his hands around her throat and squeezes, harder and harder, which each thrust._

-he’s going to die, his throat is closing, he’s made a huge mistake and he’s so, so sorry-

_Jessel goes limp between his hands and he goes limp inside her._

* * *

He wakes, gasping, and bolts upright, arms flailing against the memory of Quint’s body. He’s soaked in sweat, nauseous and shaking with adrenaline. 

What? What was that?!?

Most bewildering of all, his body liked it. His mess is warm and pooling against his skin.

Disgusted with himself, he runs from the room, down the hall to the bathroom. He races to the last shower stall in the corner, latches the door behind him before throwing on the tap, still dressed. He stands under the stream with the water on full blast, hands braced against the wall. 

He pulls off his pajamas and dumps them in sodden heaps on the tile floor at his feet. 

He’s wracked with sobs he unsuccessfully tries to suppress. 

“Are you…ok?” an unfamiliar boy’s voice calls out.

“Fine!” he calls back, “Just…fine!”

As if it’s totally normal to cry in the shower at 3am. He hadn’t even tried to be quiet as he’d thudded down the hall.

“Um, ok…do you, like, need anything?”

“No. Just…please go away.”

He doesn’t hear anything more. Later, when he shuts the water off, he realizes he could have asked for a towel. He picks up his soaked pajamas, wrings them out, and puts them back on. Shivering, he returns to his room.

* * *

He sleeps fitfully the rest of the week, plagued by dreams as eerily vivid and out-of-body as the first.

_-He’s stalking around the house, pacing. Frustrated.-_

_-He’s hungry and he doesn’t know what for.-_

_-He’s down by the lake at the edge of the property. It’s muddy but he crouches down, looking out at the water, checking something. Making sure something doesn’t come back to haunt him.-_

_-Grose is giving him funny looks when she passes him. Suspicious old hag.-_

_-Little brat keeps asking questions. She should mind her own business if she knows what’s good for her.-_

He keeps waking up and falling asleep, waking up and falling asleep, as if his body is fighting slumber the way it would fight drowning in a swift current.

He must be talking in his sleep because several times he’s rudely awaked when Jedd throws an item – pillow, sneaker, whatever’s close to his bed – at him, barking at him to keep it down. 

He’s hurting and all the dark bullshit he’s tried so hard to suppress is swirling like oil on water, tainting his slumber.

That’s the most logical explanation.

He has to remind himself of this when he gets a letter from Flora, informing him that “Ms. Jessel has gone away. She read me a chapter from _Little House on Plum Creek_ and said goodnight and then she wasn’t there in the morning. Mrs. Grose said she had to leave in the night and can’t come back anymore.”

What? Jessel just left? Why? He’s angry that she would do that to Flora, Flora trusts her. She still won’t leave the estate, still has no friends. She’s an isolated little girl.

Fuck Jessel. Fuck anyone who would hurt his little sister. 

_“There are ghosts in the East Wing, the spirit of an evil governess who killed the children who lived there. Sometimes, at night she stalks the corridors, looking for her next victim.”_

Well, yeah, he did make up that story, didn’t he?

Shit.

He remembers the sticky photographs on the floor, Quint’s hands on them both. He can’t help but feel that he’s responsible for driving Jessel away.

_You and me._

He remembers the dream. The first one and the one he would most like to forget.

He checks the postmark on the letter. He thinks it’s from a day or two after.

_-the terror on Jessel’s face-_

_-the climax-_

No. Dreams don’t work like that in real life.

“They’re just dreams, they can’t hurt you.” He hears himself whisper aloud. 

* * *

A few nights later it happens again.

_He’s angry, he’s been wronged and he’s angry. He’s at the top of the main stairs looking down at Grose, standing in the foyer._

_She’s ruined everything. She thought she’d stopped him. But she’s a very stupid old woman._

_She’s taunting him, self-righteous and important. As if she isn’t a glorified motel chamber maid in old lady sweaters and sensible shoes._

_His hackles rise._

_She wants him to leave this house. She’s got no right to do that and he tells her._

_She’s defying him, this is his goddamn house now._

_He’ll show her. He charges down the stairs when his foot catches on something unseen, stretched taut across the stair._

_His ankle twists and he falls, tumbling and bouncing down the stairs, crashing and bumping all the way down._

_His neck is at the wrong angle when he lands, he can tell that. He can’t move._

_There is a sensible shoe at his throat and then a heavy thud against his head._

_He isn’t finished here._

* * *

Miles flies awake again. He has to talk to Quint, has to hear his real voice, to pull him out of this fucked up dark dream world he keeps visiting. Quint will laugh and tell him to man up, to stop giving into this Gothic horror bullshit.

He bolts out of the room, vaguely aware of Jedd throwing something to the effect of–“Dude, for fuck’s sake, not again”—in his direction. He skids to a halt in front of the hall phone, frantically dialing his home number. 

It rings several times before Mrs. Grose picks up.

“Mrs. Grose! I –“ he’s relieved to hear her voice.

It was just a dream. Everything’s fine.

“I need to talk to Quint!”

“Miles! It’s the middle of the night, are you alright?”

“I’m fine, sorry, just, wake him up, please?”

“I, I can’t now Miles, can we talk tomorrow?”

“No, please, Mrs. Grose, it’s important.”

“Well, it’s just…Miles I really hoped to tell you at a better time…Quint had an accident.”

“What!?”

“Yo, it’s quiet hours, you can’t be on the phone!” comes a voice from a nearby doorway. 

Miles cups his hand over the receiver.

“What do you mean? When?”

“Tonight. I only found him a little while ago. I…the paramedics are here now.”

He can hear muffled voices in the background.

“What happened? Is he going to be ok?”

“Miles, we should talk tomorrow-“

“Tell me!”

“Dude, seriously, get off the phone!”

Miles turns and yells in the direction of the voice, “Fuck off, Cameron, you were on the phone for over an hour with your girlfriend last week!”

“Love, the paramedics pronounced him just before you called. He’s dead.”

No. That’s not. No.

“What?”

“I’m so sorry” –Mrs. Grose’s voice is tremulous—"I know what he meant to you.”

Miles leans his head against the wall next to the phone. This isn’t real. This is still a nightmare.

“I have to go talk to the police officers, now. Are you alright?”

Good question.

“Yeah, I’m fine.”

“Try to get some sleep, dear. We’ll talk tomorrow.”

She hangs up and he stands there for a moment, listening to the line disconnect, to the frantic heartbeat of a severed connection.

He hangs up and is aware of what seems to be half his hall standing in doorways, watching him.

“Can everybody fucking go back to sleep!??” he yells. 

“Little hard with you crashing around, dream boy!” Calls out Jedd from their door. 

Miles stomps past the rows of prying eyes. He wants to hide, to get away and there’s nowhere to do that here.

He misses headquarters so much.

He climbs into bed, pulls the covers over his head, willing himself not to cry, lest Jedd hear.

* * *

He drifts through the next few weeks, numb like he had been after the last time Mrs. Grose had given him bad news. Now, though, there is more to jar him rudely back into himself, he is constantly surrounded by people, happy, loud, teenagers living every emotion on high.

Flora sends him a card, decorated with flowers and hearts to “make him not sad.” She assures him that “everybody dies” and that she still loves him. She mentions a new tutor named Kate. She likes Kate. She assures Miles that he would like her too.

Mrs. Grose writes to tell him that it appeared Quint had been riding Morpheus late at night while drunk, had fallen and broken his neck. She found him when she heard Morpheus in the paddock, whinnying in the dark when he ought to be in the stable.

It doesn’t make sense. Quint wasn’t stupid enough to ride while drunk. Was he? It doesn’t sit well with him but what evidence does he have to the contrary? The nightmares of a fifteen year old aren’t likely to be taken seriously by anyone.

Miles doesn’t know what to think about any of it at all.

Except that somehow he feels responsible. He pushed Quint away toward the end, he spurned him. There is so much he wants to say to him now and he can’t.

He wants to talk about everything they were never supposed to talk about. Everything they did, no matter how confusing it was.

But he missed his moment and never spoke up while he had the chance.

He hides as much as he can, skipping class to curl up in his room in Quint’s sweater, reading and re-reading his letters. When Jedd’s in the room, he goes to the library, finds corners throughout the school where he can be alone.

At home, he was forgotten by the rest of the world. Here, he is mostly forgotten while in the midst of others.

Being noticed has its dangers, he soon realizes, as he enters the dining hall for lunch one afternoon. Jedd’s voice rings out, proclaiming the very familiar words

_“I dreamt I was inside you again…”_

There is jeering and hooting.

Miles stops dead in the doorway to the dining hall.

No.

No he hid that letter. He hid it well.

_“…alive because I was inside your body…”_

Explosive laughter.

Shit.

He’s fallen asleep with letters scattered across his bed. He might not have noticed if one was missing in the morning.

_“...I guided your hands and you liked it…”_

He isn’t going to live this down. And now boys are noticing him standing there, jabbing each other, alert to his presence.

Jedd is standing on a chair, smirking.

“Well if it isn’t Fair-ey-child himself,” he calls across the room.

Miles moves down the aisle between tables, burning with humiliation.

“Gotta say, I would have pegged a loser like you for a virgin but it sounds like your Peter’s fucked you good. You’re his little bitch –“

In a flash Miles decks him, launching him off the chair and several feet away. The dining room erupts in cheers and chants of encouragement as he lands a punch straight to Jedd’s eye before he can get up.

Quint taught him how to fight too.

Jedd lashes back and pretty soon they’re both whaling on each other until several teachers respond to the chaos and pull them apart.

They both get detention for a week. 

Miles couldn’t care less. Jedd, on the other hand, is going to miss lacrosse practice and a game. 

“Your dead meat, Fair-ey-child,” he growls at him before he’s dismissed from the headmaster’s office. 

“Mr. Fairchild, a word.” The headmaster motions for him to stay.

“This letter is…concerning. Who exactly is this Peter Quint?”

“No one.”

“No one? This is a very suggestive letter, are you sure you can’t tell me anything more?”

“Not your fucking business,” Miles mumbles.

“I’m sorry, what was that?”

“I said it’s not your business.”

“Mind your mouth, young man. You’re on thin ice as it is, academically speaking, and this outburst in the dining hall isn’t helping your situation.”

He folds the letter and slides it back across his desk to Miles.

“You can have this back.” Miles looks at it, wondering if this is a test, as if his reaction is being monitored.

He slowly picks it up and sticks it inside his jacket pocket.

The headmaster sighs. “You’ve had a rough few years, Miles. Are you sure there’s nothing you want to say? Is there another teacher you’d rather talk to?”

“Not really.”

“Alright, you can go. Go do your homework, several teachers tell me you’re behind.”

Miles gets up and shoulders his bag.

“Miles.”

He pauses.

“Death touches everyone. But life is for the living. There’s always a way forward.”

Miles swallows.

_All the more reason to come back to the land of the living_

“So everyone keeps telling me.”

* * *

Detention passes uneventfully. He sits in the back of the room, staring out the window, idly piecing together song lyrics in his head, wondering if any of them will seem halfway coherent once he gets around to writing them down.

After his last day in detention, he heads to the library to scribble some in a notebook. In theory he’s doing homework but, well, this is fresh in his mind and he doesn’t want to forget.

He kind of likes what he’s written and gets a pleasant boost from a return to creativity.

He’s coming up on his room when he thinks he smells something acrid and burning. He pauses, sniffing. He pushes open the door and is greeted by a haze of smoke.

Alarmed, he rushes inside to try to find the source, stop it before it gets worse.

It’s emanating from his trashcan. Inside are the charred remains of his letters and his scrapbook, still smoldering.

He lunges forward, trying to pull out what he can but it is no use. Crayon drawings from Flora, letters from Quint, birthday cards from his parents, all burnt beyond salvage. His scrapbook is scorched all around the edges, the pages and photographs singed and distorted.

He beats the scrapbook against the floor to smother any lingering embers. It’s at least partially intact but the damage is irreversible. Especially since, upon further inspection of the trashcan’s remaining contents, it would appear Jedd ripped out some of the photos to burn them along with the letters. 

“Got to take the porn away from the perv!” Jedd taunts, standing in the doorway behind him, his friends in tow. They all snicker at him.

Miles curses himself for ever tipping his hand about which of his possessions mattered most to him.

“Don’t worry, I’m sure your Peter will write you more love letters **,** ” Jedd chortles, grabbing his toothbrush and heading out, shutting the door behind him.

Miles stands there, reeling. For a moment he feels bile in his throat and thinks he’s going to be sick. But the only place to hurl would be in the trashcan and he can’t do that, not when the charred remains of his childhood are in there. He closes his eyes and leans heavily on his desk, pressing his palms into the edge until they hurt.

The sickness passes. He opens his eyes and stands up, lightly pushing off and away from his desk. Almost on autopilot, he unknots his tie and pulls it out of his shirt collar. It’s as if he knows exactly what he needs to do.

Striding purposefully for the bathroom, he wraps the ends around his hands. He enters the humid room that smells too strongly of Axe, approaches Jedd, standing in a cluster of friends by the sinks, and in one fluid motion drops his tie over Jedd’s head and swiftly crosses his hands, twisting his impromptu garrote as he drags Jedd to the ground.

Bullies are strong animals. If you don’t exert power over them, you’ll never gain control.

“They were mine! They’re all gone and they were mine!” he hears himself shout over the cacophony of Jedd’s choked gasps, the thud of his feet pounding against the tile, the shouts of the other boys ringing across the hard surfaces of the room. 

He will be respected. He will not be defied.

“You’ve taken everything from me! Everything!”

He’s stronger than he’s ever been. Jedd is flailing, hitting at the sides of Miles’ head, his face, his arms. The other boys are trying to pull him off of Jedd but somehow he shakes them off. He’s angry in a way he’s never been before, he feels a rage inside him, like someone else is taking control.

God, it feels good.

At some point, he’s pulled off Jedd enough that he loses his grip on the tie and Jedd heaves in a lungful of air before Miles throws himself back on top his chest, knees pinning him down, wrapping his bare hands on the front of Jedd’s throat.

All in all, it takes three boys and a teacher to haul him off an unconscious Jedd and drag him out of the room as he shouts “I hate you, I hate you, you deserve to fucking die!”

* * *

He’s expelled that night. Sent home the next morning on the train.

Quint was right. Cigarettes are for eleven year olds. Go big to go home.

* * *

The taxi drops him off at the house late that night. He’d called Mrs. Grose from the payphone at the station. She was brusque, her disapproval evident. She knows he has keys, she won’t have waited up for him. 

He heads quietly to his room, making a mental note as he passes Flora’s door to see her first thing tomorrow and spend the entire day with her. Once in his room, he drops his bags on the floor. It’s all just as he left it. But, just as things have never been the same since the accident, it feels totally different.

For old time’s sake, he grabs a flashlight from his desk and sets off to the East Wing.

The chain is gone from the door. He wonders if that means Mrs. Grose knows about headquarters and decided to remove the pretense that this was a secret. Or maybe Quint had made that decision.

He opens the doors and enters the darkened hallway. 

It’s only been a few months but it’s as if he hasn’t seen this place in years, like it’s aged in his absence. It’s less creepy than he recalls – but, then, there’s nothing to be afraid of here anymore. 

It just seems old and sad. 

He’s aware of a presence though, as he goes from room to room, a force that’s drawing him toward it, whatever it is. 

His stride quickens as he opens doors, casts his light into corners, searches with increasing urgency. It calls to him although he can’t actually hear anything.

Or can he?

He stops and turns in the direction of his name. No he didn’t hear it, he felt it, the way you recognize your name when called from afar even if you don’t fully distinguish the sounds.

He follows the sensation up the stairs and down the hallway toward headquarters, his heart pounding, pumping dread throughout him.

He’s sweating when he halts in front of the door, slightly ajar. 

He doesn’t want to open it. He doesn’t want to go back inside.

He hears a floorboard creak and he turns and bolts down the hallway, hurrying down the stairs, as if something is chasing him. He hears footsteps and he ducks into another room, shutting the door behind him, hyperventilating.

The footsteps come closer and closer. He shuts his flashlight off and waits, trying to not make noise.

The door is flung open. An unfamiliar blonde woman jumps, as startled as he is.

Ah. Jessel’s replacement. Kate? He thinks that’s the name Flora wrote to him.

She looks terrified.

“Who are you?” she gasps.

“I’m Miles. I live here.”

This is his house. He’s got nothing to be afraid of.

Why is she wandering through the East Wing? She’s got no business here.

“You shouldn’t be in here.” 

He wants to laugh. He’s fine. There’s nothing here except this ditz. He’s fine.

“You should go back to bed,” he condescends, as if he wasn’t scared shitless only moments before, then he saunters past her and down the hall. 

Once he’s back in his room he pauses a moment after he closes his door.

He turns the lock.

There’s nothing to be afraid of.

All’s well as the strips off his uniform, dumping it on the floor, and pulls his pajamas out of his suitcase.

But as he settles down to sleep, he feels a familiar unease twist within him, followed by the sensation of Quint’s weight upon him as he lies in his bed -his bed, not the mattress in the East Wing- in his room where Quint had never ventured. 

The tension rises in him as he smells Quint’s breath, stubble grazing his cheek.

He begins to tremble.

He wants to say no but knows better. Knows that if it was bad to resist before, it would be far worse now.

“Please,” he whispers in the dark, barely able to conceal a whimper, “Please don’t.”

There is no one there to answer but he knows there is someone there to hear.

_I will never leave you._

Even death, it would seem, cannot break that promise.

**Author's Note:**

> •[Femme_Daltia](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Femme_Daltia) gets full credit for coming up with the name of this fic. Depeche Mode's _In Your Room ___(the album version rather than the single/music video version - they are quite different) is the mood that underscores this entire story.
> 
> •I was inspired to write this fic from some clips of _The Turning ___(2020) and wrote this story before watching the entire film. Thus a few details are not compliant with the film.


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